Extra Parts

I watch a lot of movies. There was a time when I thought I’d be in movies, but I’m past that now, just as I’m pretty sure I’m never going to walk on the Moon or play centerfield for the Yankees. Acting looks like fun, and pays well, too, but then I found out that you have to go to auditions. The first time I sat at a table and tried to sell things at a flea market, I discovered that I have a low threshold for rejection. I quickly reach that point where I’m tempted to grab people by the throat and demand to know what they’re looking for. That wouldn’t be a helpful reputation, I suspect. Word would soon spread that I’m a temperamental artist who’s hard to work with, and there goes my career.

Since abandoning the acting profession, I’ve settled into my new role as an audience member. The money tends to flow in the opposite direction, but at least I get to be the one who does the criticizing.

Not that my observations are harsh, or even significant. Most relate to minor details that most people would fail to notice, or choose to overlook. Here are a few.

1. It rains in every movie. It’s never a light rain, or a normal rain, either. It’s always a sudden downpour that appears to be located directly above someone’s head — or their house, if it’s an indoor shot. The drops of water are the size of small plums and threaten to dent the tops of cars. Apparently, film makers have this machine that simulates precipitation, and they’re required to use it in every movie in order to justify the investment. As far as I can tell, this is just another example of Hollywood extravagance. A garden hose would work almost as well. But heavy rain is dramatic, so the cinematic monsoons are likely to continue, and as always we’ll see very few films that take place in the desert, or on the planet Mercury.

2. There are also people smoking cigarettes in every movie. There’s usually no reason for them to light up, so you may not consciously notice it, but once you do, it’s startling to see how often it happens. I wonder if the tobacco companies are subsidizing the rain machine, and getting free commercials in return.

3. Most movies force us to read too much. I read all day, so when I sit down to watch something, I don’t want to be confronted with emails, text messages, Internet searches, and notes on crumpled scraps of paper. These fragments of information are always shown during a pivotal point in the story, and difficult to decipher on our relatively tiny television. This usually causes me to grow agitated, point to the screen, and yell out, “What did that say? Who wants to meet him where and for what?”

4. Subtitles are especially confounding. At the end of the film, the credits scroll up, and I see that many hundreds of people have worked on the production. There are grips and gaffers, prop supervisors and boom operators. There is a person whose job it is to load the film into the camera, and another who pulls cables around the floor of the set. These jobs are extremely specific. The hairstylist probably has his own hairstylist. I have to think that it must be someone’s responsibility to look at the subtitles and make sure they’re readable. If dialogue is important enough to translate, it’s likely to be somewhat crucial to the plot. But apparently, when a film slips over budget, the subtitle guy is the first to go, replaced by a blindfolded court stenographer. As a result, we get white letters superimposed onto a snowstorm. We also get characters rattling away in a foreign language while the English version flies by at the bottom of the picture, causing me to lean forward and again scream, “She called her mother when and heard what about whose sister?” This isn’t a major problem at home, where the rewind and pause buttons are always within reach. At the theater, however, it causes me to miss the rest of the movie because now my mind is preoccupied with formulating the indignant letters I’m planning to send to the director, the cinematographer, and the head of the production company, and maybe their hairstylists, too.

5. Chase scenes bore me beyond description. I usually find myself wishing that all the vehicles involved would slam into a wall or drive over a cliff, just so it would stop. Sometimes the chase is on foot, with people scrambling up ladders, across rooftops, and through dark alleys cluttered with barrels of trash. In most of these scenes, at least one of the people who’s driving or running is unfamiliar with the location, yet seems to know every shortcut and secret hiding place. I yell at the screen once more, but they’re all too busy dodging taxis, delivery trucks, and skidding buses to hear a word I’m saying.

6. Romantic comedies should have a running-time limit of ten minutes. This is how long it takes me to figure out who’s going to end up with whom. And believe me, I’m not exactly an insightful viewer. I had to watch The Three Stooges twice, because I missed most of the nuance the first time.

At the beginning of a romantic comedy, one of the main characters is engaged to someone who is rude, insensitive, and not a good listener. Don’t worry. They will not get married. Also, very close to the end of the film, the couple you’re hoping will be together will appear to break up and you might fear that their relationship is doomed. It isn’t. At the last possible moment, one of them will jump on a plane and go to Belgium, where the other person has been living for the past year, apparently without any social life whatsoever. They will kiss in the doorway, say something charming, and that’s the end of the story.

As the credits roll, there will be another short clip up in the corner, showing the couple now happily married with three kids and a dog. And who knows? Maybe someday my name will be among those hundreds that scroll by in a blur. I won’t be playing a main character, but more likely an astronaut or a baseball player. Or I might be the guy at the flea market, grabbing a customer by the throat. But no matter the role, I’m sure it’ll be raining really hard, and we’ll all be smoking cigarettes and sending each other important messages that you won’t be able to read. You can count on that.

Thanks for the lunch time laugh, Charles. I especially agree with the formula romance stories: pick the two characters who hate each other most and you’ve got the ones who will be engaged in the end. I cannot say I’ve EVER seen that happen in real life. And the chase scenes, especially foot chases: who can really run, wearing a suit and tie and dress shoes, for 7.8 miles while climbing fire escape ladders and leaping from building to building? I used to run cross country races, but I could not do THAT. I think they should call the place Phonywood.

The only real mystery to those movies is how the couple will eventually get together. Sometimes there’s an elaborate wedding planned, and either the groom or the bride is replaced by the new person at the last minute. The wedding goes on, just with a different couple.

I loved the part about the credits…I am among the few who sit through the entire thing. I feel if I enjoyed the movie I at least owe the people who made it (even the caterer and animal coaches) the courtesy of viewing their name. Also, sometimes the end of the movie has a surprise twist that comes after some of the credits have rolled (as in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”) and even some amusing outtakes that are good for a laugh. And count me among the few chicks who would rather watch the Stooges than a rom-com.

Catherine, have you ever noticed that somewhere in the credits, there’s almost always a consecutive pair of first names that are the same? Sometimes there are five or six doubles in one movie. It’s a game I invented, trying to spot the doubles. Not really a game, exactly, because it’s pointless. But it adds a tiny bit of interest to an otherwise completely boring activity.

Thanks for the laughs…..My current passion is the Mexican telenovela. I can now understand the spanish so don’t have to rely on the spanish sub-titles… In these everyone is always crying including the men, and they don’t spare nada when it comes to the waterworks, including the runny noses. I could do with less realism. Some of the actors roles consist solely of blubbering…. Now THAT’S entertainment, amigo.

I was going to take exception with your contention that there’s rain and smoking in every movie, until I remembered that I mostly don’t watch movies, so I can’t really judge. What I did notice was this: “But apparently, when a film slips over budget, the subtitle guy is the first to go, replaced by a blindfolded court stenographer. As a result, we get white letters superimposed onto a snowstorm.”

That pointed me in the direction of my current irritation and frustration: web sites that insist on this new, chi-chi combination of tiny font, gray or pale blue text on an even paler gray or white background. One day, the cool kids who are designing those sites are going to be 60 instead of 30 (or 20) and then they’ll see what it’s like to not be able to see!

Honestly — there are blogs and web sites I’ve stopped reading because they’re unreadable.I should write a letter to someone!

Maybe it’s the Zen approach to website design — it forces you to slow down, look more closely, concentrate, and release all expectations. However, it also forces you to squint, and gives you eyestrain and headaches. There are basic rules that have developed over time because they make sense, and they work. This latest trend is probably just defiance for its own sake. At the risk of sounding ancient, these are the same people who pay money to have their own tongues pierced.

Cat, the alternative would be an interesting experiment, too: turn off the picture and just listen to the movie. Our minds would likely produce their own images. We tend to think of the visual part of a film as the most important, but I bet listening without the picture would give you a much more accurate idea of what it’s about than the other way around.

There’s my early morning laugh Charles, thank you! I had a vivid picture of you shouting at your television and theatre screens 🙂 I actually had to get myself some glasses specifically for movie watching and the reading of sub-titles and credit lists – it was driving me batty!! Perhaps the optometrists association is in cahoots with the movie makers too ………

Pauline, please know that I don’t really yell in theaters. Not out loud, anyway. But I do wonder how those people feel, the ones whose names are listed in the illegible, high-speed credits, especially when they’re also competing with out-takes and other movie leftovers.

How about the intense and viciously graphic cruelty in Swedish crime movies? Do you suppose appreciation of such gratuitous visual detail is a secret national characteristic? Indeed, creating incinerated corpses, mangled body parts, bullets in the forehead, slashed and bloodied bit players must require at least a couple of inches of credits for the corpse designers, consulting pathologists, and makeup artists specializing in gruesome death. It’s enough to turn usually tolerant me off the not-bad plots of Wallander and Annika Girl Crime Reporter for good. Although perhaps you may not even watch such gory heart-pounding stuff?

You’re right, Nina: There must be an entire industry that employs artists and technicians whose specialty is the simulation of violence and death. I watched 12 Years a Slave last night, and wondered several times how the film makers depicted the horrors of that story with such realism.

I guess I’ve become an ostrich as I’ve grown older. I don’t have the guts any more to watch movies like that one. It’s enough to know about the horrors in life, without having to see them shown so realistically. But then you’re younger, and arguably braver, than I am. 🙂

Chase scenes bore me beyond description as well. I also notice that people NEVER SHUT the door they open in a house. Just leave it open. And women go to bed in full make-up and wearing bras so that they are supported in the scenes and not lobbing about to and fro.

This is why I pretty much stick with the animated ones – very little rain, absolutely no smoking. There is a chase scene in Toy Story that goes on a bit too long, but I’m so in awe of the computer graphics that it is tolerable 🙂

I avoid watching action movies, because the word action refers only to chasing and shooting — and people jumping from the roof of one truck onto the roof of another while both are traveling eighty miles an hour on a six-lane highway.

Thanks for the laugh! I’ve thought the same thing about car/foot chases and romantic comedies; will be on the lookout for all that rain and cigarette smoking. I actually don’t mind subtitles but find I miss the first quarter of a movie’s story line if someone is British/Scottish. It takes me that long to get used to the accent!

I have the same problem with the accents, Geralyn, especially if the actors mumble, which they seem to do a lot. I typically say this at least ten times during one of those movies: “I didn’t understand a single word he just said.”

Love your humorous observations, Charles. I love a misty rain. But, you’re right. That type of rainfall is unlikely to be in a movie.

You’re spot on about the romantic movies, too. I have never seen one where I was surprised by the outcome. The only nice guy that was ditched, in my memory, was when Meg Ryan dumped Bill Pullman for that guy (Tom Hanks) in “Sleepless in Seattle.”

As for the credits, I always wanted the job as Best Girl. There’s a Best Boy. Shouldn’t there be a Best Girl?

The rain thing is essential to every movie that intends to have any commercial value. Sex sells and gets talked about. It doesn’t matter what the rating of the movie is, if you put a “healthy” male or female out in the rain, you’ve got yourself a wet T-shirt contest. It has nothing to do with the story.
I’ve been noticing a lot of smoking in films and TV lately. It totally disappeared for awhile. I remember when “Mad Men” first aired and everyone was smoking it seemed really weird because we hadn’t seen characters smoke in some time. Now it is everywhere again. One show has taken it to a whole new level. “Leftovers” has pretty much made smoking a character unto itself. Bizarre show. I can’t figure it out for the life of me but, it makes me want to light up.

Ha! Thanks for the chuckle this morning. Now that my oldest son has had his name listed in a few small films, I find myself staying around for the credits of every movie out of respect for all the “little people” working behind the scenes. I even got a mention in the credits of one of his films for “craft service” (meaning I overfed the actors and crew all weekend while they shot on location near our home–my beef stew was a big hit). I despise subtitles, not because I don’t want to read, but I just don’t understand how a 30-second, obviously volatile monologue can be transcribed into half a dozen bland words. Was the transcriber just too lazy to type it all out and chose to give us a watered-down paraphrase? Or do other languages have that many superfluous words, and the transcriber was able to succinctly relay in English every minute detail? I feel cheated. Write your indignant letters, and you can sign my name to them as well.

I’ve noticed the same thing about the length of certain translations, and it isn’t just in movies. It even includes flights leaving the airport in Montreal. The safety instructions in French go on and on, while the English version is something like, “Be careful, if you wish.”

As a former future star of stage and screen, I am glad that I didn’t fulfill my destiny as a star for one of the very reasons you pointed out. Smoking. Yuck. Everybody seems to have a stinky cigarette hanging from their lip. Yuck. Medical research smells better than theatre.

I enjoyed reading it. The thing that bothers me is when the main character starts smoking, I thought smoking causes cancer, why they promote smoking in the movie is hard to understand.
The subtitles always distracts me, some of the translations do not make sense.

The bit on romantic comedies was way too hilarious! But seriously speaking, you should give Irani cinema a go, Charles, if you haven’t watched any Irani movie before. Those guys put Hollywood to shame, really.

I have a hard time with most old movies, Ronnie. But I will say that at least they had definite boundaries as far as language and content. I’m really tired of Hollywood’s penchant for the raunchy and profane. Are we ever going to grow up?

Ah the rain! I actually watched a behind the scenes footage where the actors were practically drowning and could barely get their lines out through the onslaught of what might as well have been a water hose. Who needs the expensive equipment?

Most of the rain scenes are unnecessary, anyway. Every screenwriting book I’ve read says that if something doesn’t advance the story, then it doesn’t belong. I’ve watched very few movies that follow the rule.

You’re dead on here with the rain, the cigarettes and the chase scenes. Every movie has them it seems. And they film a lot of movies here in New Mexico where it doesn’t rain that much, but there is a virtual downpour, flooding the streets, in almost every movie filmed here. Well, I guess it does do that doing the monsoon season, sometimes, depending on where you are. I watch too many movies. I finally stopped buying them, I have a collection of movies I have only watched once that number in the hundreds.

It’s rare when a movie really grabs my attention because I’m usually guessing everything that is going to happen before the first scene. It takes a lot to surprise me. Here’s an idea– YOU should write a screenplay. I’d pay to see that movie!

Reblogged this on bardalacray and commented:
… and i watched pretty little liars waiting for the end of thesame kind of suspense but to no avail. i stopped on the 4th season feeling bad for watching that much. A is everybody and nobody, A is a friend and an enemy, A is perfect and can never be caught, A doesn’t have a face. A is me at last. Some movies are too real to be real

There was once a Chinese movie about ghosts that became very popular with English-speakers, because of the poor subtitling. The *special effects* of the movie were also quite terrible, and combined with the subtitles, the movie catapulted itself into another genre. Actually, I’d recommend watching any Chinese action movie from the 70s or 80s just for the subtitles. It’s quite obvious the translator was somebody who knew somebody working on the film, who spoke only enough English to buy a hamburger or find the bathroom.

There seems to be a line between good movies and bad, and if a film is far enough over the line in either direction, it becomes popular. Let me know if you can remember the title of the one about ghosts.

I’ll usually walk out on movies that are lousy. One exception was so bad I had to see it to the end. It was a movie with Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn, It took place in Michigan so I was shocked to see someone riding in a car and you see the MOUNTAIN RANGE off in the distance across the vast flatlands. But the worst was when someone took a ferry across Lake Michigan to Detroit. 😦